Bertha+Isserstadt

On August 14, 1908, 23-year-old homemaker Bertha Isserstadt, a Jewish immigrant from Austria, died at Chicago's Evangelical Deconesses' Hospital from complications of an abortion perpetrated on August 5.

A woman named Margaret Wiedman, age 39, was held by the coroner, but eventually acquitted for reasons not given in the source document. Wiedman's profession was given as "abortion provider".

Weidman insisted that she had been summoned to Bertha's home on June 13 and asked to perform an abortion but she had refused. Bertha's death, she said, was caused by eating green apples.

Bertha's abortion was atypical in that it was not [|performed by a physician].

Note, please, that with general public health issues such as doctors not using proper aseptic techniques, lack of access to blood transfusions and antibiotics, and overall poor health to begin with, there was likely little difference between the performance of a legal abortion and illegal practice, and the aftercare for either type of abortion was probably equally unlikely to do the woman much, if any, good. For more about abortion and abortion deaths in the first years of the 20th century, see [|Abortion Deaths 1900-1909].

For more on pre-legalization abortion, see [|The Bad Old Days of Abortion]

Sources:
 * [|Homicide in Chicago Interactive Database]
 * "Woman Held to Grand Jury," //Chicago Inter-Ocean//, August 20, 1908

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